Constructing the Conjugal: Photographs of Marriage in India

About the Speaker

Suryanandini Narain is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She teaches papers on the history of Indian Photography, Visual Culture, Aesthetic Theory and Critical Writing. A recipient of scholarships from the Ford Foundation, INLAKS and ICSSR, she has also been involved as an assistant editor for various Marg magazines and volumes. Her doctoral thesis addressed the feminine figure in family photographs from Delhi. She has spoken on the subject at various cultural institutions and written in academic journals and catalogues. Currently, she is writing an essay titled 'From Studio to Home, Wall to Wallet: what frames inform family photographs' for a forthcoming book on photography titled Modern and Contemporary Indian Photography, edited by Gayatri Sinha (2019).

Abstract

In this lecture I seek to visually examine the married couple as the central node of the family unit. My proposition is that photographs essentially support conjugality through the use of complex visual metaphors. As everyday objects, these images lie unquestioned in all our homes, our family albums, state records and archives, perhaps deserving greater scrutiny for their constructedness. I contrast the studio and the home as locations for the conjugal portrait’s composition, and put into relief the messages of romance and propriety from such images.

Report

Ms. Suryanandini Narayan, Assistant professor of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawahar Lal Nehru University, delivered an illuminating lecture on the subject of conjugality in the Indian context. From colonial times to the present, photographs and anecdotes aided her study. She began by informing the listeners that the focus on conjugality in India came after the 19th century Reform Movement, prior to which, joint families were the norm. The work of reformers such as Rammohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar also led to an improvement in the position of women in society. The industrialization of the Indian society in the 1950s-60s further led to couples moving out of their parents’ home and leading a more private life. Ms. Narayan stresses that photographs capture conjugality with everyday objects and choices functioning as major keys to study these relationships.

Ms. Narayan began by contrasting the photographs of two couples from different stages in their respective marriages; Payal and Ajay, and Mala and Sandeep. The former was a marriage arranged with the aid of a matrimonial advertisement in Hindustan Times. Displaying multiple photographs of their engagement, marriage and a studio portrait taken at their 1st wedding anniversary, Ms. Narayan pursued the evolution of their conjugality. The awkwardness and formality of their engagement photo was replaced by a sense of stability and comfort emanating from their posture, expression and costume in the studio portrait. On the other hand Mala and Sandeep’s photograph was in contrast to the constructedness of Payal and Ajay’s. The couple was photographed in the living room of their home in the third year of their marriage. Having just moved out of Sandeep’s parents’ home, the couple posed in a more intimate manner. The presence of household objects and their child’s toys wasn’t a hindrance to the photograph, instead it embedded the couple in their newfound domesticity.

Another interesting case study was of a photograph of a high profile couple- Rizwan ur Rehman and Priyanka. Rizwan was murdered in Kolkata in 2011 and Priyanka’s father was the prime suspect. The couple’s photo—widely circulated in the media— made ‘no claims to fantasy’. With no external markers of marriage, the two were photographed in humble garb and expressions. The simple photograph was equated with the straightforward constitutional right to marriage, irrespective of class, caste or religion. This is in stark contrast to the communal nature of the crime committed. While analyzing conjugality in other unconventional marriages, Ms. Narayan also studied a colonial era photograph of a child bride with her adult husband. Surrounded by Victorian paraphernalia, their gazes crossed, looking behind the camera and an uncomfortable hand of the bride resting on the husband’s shoulder; these were efforts to normalize the marriage. In such cases, the camera becomes the authorizing agent or, the author of the photograph.

While this enamoring talk held many other poignant observations about conjugality other than the ones mentioned above, it ultimately established the photograph as an instrument that captures conjugality as shaped by that era’s zeitgeist. The idea that a couple’s photograph—more often than not a personal possession—is potent of a society’s religious, socio-political and economic ideals demanded of a married couple in a particular age is a valuable revelation.

By Rohini Sharma, Undergraduate Class of 2020